View full sizePenn State will be finding it much harder to land top-flight recruits like Cedar Cliff's Adam Breneman. CHRIS KNIGHT, The Patriot-News

Ten fewer scholarships per season starting with the 2013 recruiting class is a debilitating number. Losing 40 potential players gives O’Brien and his staff their road map for the near future.

Penn State still has 15 players to get on board each of those four years — and it means the margin for error is minimal.

What will members of the coaching staff look for when they head out on the road to piece together the 2014 class and the two beyond?

Talent is always at the top of the list when evaluating potential recruits. And it will still be a high priority for O’Brien’s staff.

But it won’t be the most important. Penn State will have to make character and academic potential important pieces of the puzzle.

Sounds like what the Ivy League schools recruit.

Exactly. Penn State will need to find as many model citizens as possible.

Losing scholarship players to academic eligibility or off-the-field transgressions will leave more of a tread mark than in the past.

Injuries can’t be helped in football, and PSU will lose some of its scholarship players to season- and even career-ending injuries. It’s part of the game. A rare run of good luck on the injury front over the next four years certainly would help the cause. The recruits the Nittany Lions get on board will play — early and often.

Forget about those five-star recruits, too, after the 2013 class. Players that high on the food chain are not going to consider Penn State. One or two of the top 10 players at their positions in the country over the next four years would be a coup.

I suspect more Pennsylvania players will be on the table over the next half decade. Loyalty matters, so evaluating the middle-of-the-road talent inside the state will be extremely important.

Should O’Brien abandon his expanded geographical recruiting plan? Absolutely not. He’ll continue to dream big and sell the NFL preparation he can offer as his ace in the hole. But it probably will take the coaches twice as much work to get their 15 scholarship players as it will take the other Big Ten schools to reach 25.

The other hammer that the NCAA hit Penn State’s football program with was the number 65. By 2014, the Lions roster must have 20 fewer scholarship players on it than the competition.

Some are worried about this, but to me this is something the new staff will overcome quicker than people might think. O’Brien is used to coaching the 53 players on an NFL roster — as are a couple of his assistants.

Yes, 65 is closer to the 63-scholarship limit of an FCS school. But, like anything else, it’s what you do with those you have that really matters.

So what is a former football machine supposed to do to pick up the pieces and remain competitive in a BCS power conference?

Developing a functioning and efficient walk-on program is a potential treasure key to unlocking competitiveness the next half-dozen years.

You don’t win on Saturdays with walk-on players. They are walk-ons for a reason. But you can use them to get those who will do the heavy lifting between the lines as prepared as possible.

Penn State traditionally has had a strong walk-on program. Because tradition took a nuclear bomb hit Monday morning, O’Brien will have to build his own version of a walk-on program from scratch.

Someone asked me if I thought Penn State would look more like the Temple program five years ago or FCS power Villanova when this is over. I don’t have a crystal ball, so again the unknown rules. But my answer was neither.

Penn State will be limited because of the recruiting restrictions and the bowl and postseason ban. But it will be playing football and it will be getting television exposure.

That’s all O’Brien wanted.

Now that he has it, the rest is up to him.

And get ready, Penn State fans, because it will look very different on many, many fronts. I guarantee you that. Change was already in the air around this program. Now it will be the order of the day.

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